


Some Strings Attached

by NevillesGran



Series: Twisted Fate [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Pre-Canon, Vampires, not great detail in graphic violence but better safe than sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-05 23:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10319789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: In an alternate world, years before they would meet the rest of the team that would one day be known as Vox Machina, the fates of Vax'ildan and Vex'ahlia go...a little off-course....Vex woke up in not-cold.





	

Vex woke up not-cold, that particular sensation where she could feel the chill of the air on her skin but she had been racing, hunting, fighting too hard for it to touch her. She had—she had been running, hadn’t she; racing, the wind whistling past her ears—

She pushed herself off the forest floor, something unseen falling off her chest as she moved, and didn’t get more than a couple inches up before a familiar furry head all but collided with hers. Trinket’s grunts were questioning but he washed her face with his tongue as eagerly as he ever had—more, really; frantic almost.

“Hey, hey buddy,” she cooed, and rubbed her face against his big, soft cheek. “I’m okay. Are you okay?” Her hands checked automatically for injury as they ran through his thick fur, and, finding none, rubbed under his ears in the way that always made him give a happy growl. He buried his nose in her shoulder, pulled back to sneeze, and determinedly buried it again.

Vex replied in kind, without the sneeze. Now that he drew her attention to it, something about Trinket smelled _really_ good. Or, not ‘smelled’, quite—t was like getting a caffeine boost from just the smell of coffee, when it was mostly anticipation. But now even in advance of the smell. There was something even better nearby, less thick with bearish musk, but Trinket was right here and she could press a kiss to his sweet, fuzzy skin, feel his pulse under her lips—gods, she was _starving,_ how had she not noticed—

“Vex!”

Warm hands pulled her back, which was weird because Vax’s hands were never warm—too thin, too busy playing with cool steel and slipping in and out of pockets. But Vax it was, bright and warm in all black on a moonless night. The not-scent wafted particularly strong from his hands, sweet with the tang of iron, and before Vex thought to speak, she was grabbing one from her shoulder and scraping her tongue across his palm. Teeth brushed the skin as well as she sucked close, because the blood hit her tongue like a drop into an icy river, like the strongest healing potion she had ever taken in Syngorn, like _flying_. A moan slipped past her lips for the pleasure of it.

“Shit, wait—”

He tried to pull away and Vex snarled, digging her nails into his arm. She _needed_ this.

“Vex!” Now he was plaintive, and- scared. Wide-eyed in the dark. Vex sat back with a wet thump--there was snow on the ground. That was odd, wasn’t it…

But she was already rising again, chasing after Vax as he stepped back over—the scent of blood in the snow was unmistakable, but Vex paid the lines hardly any mind as her wonderful brother picked a limp figure off the ground. She nearly knocked him over, racing the couple steps to tear the body from his hands because gods, _gods_ , it was still _warm_ , blazing heat like the most welcome hearth down her throat, though she didn’t think she’d ever been less cold. It wasn’t clean—the man was dead; she had to bite into him _so many_ times to get as much as possible, without a heart beating that sweet caffeine-adrenaline-red-lust- _life_ through his veins. But one arm stopped at the wrist and that was easy, still warm and bright and flowing, and if she lost some against the snow, or her hands, or her once-clean shirt, well, there was spare. Or, there was enough. Enough to be satisfied, to still the hunger and the _ache_ inside her chest, her bones.

She looked up when she finished, or, when the blood stopped flowing as easily and she was full enough to think of anything else. “Vax?” She glanced around--at the snow, the bare trees, the crisp, moonless sky. “Shouldn’t it be autumn?”

Vax had stumbled backwards, was watching her with—horror? Why was he-- What had she—

Vex looked down at her hands, covered in blood. (She thought to lick them clean.) At her shirt, at the snow, at the body torn to pieces in her lap. Still-warm chunks of bone and muscle, still smelling sweet with blood and life. She bit her lip to keep it from trembling and her incisors were far too sharp; she reached up to touch them with one weak hand.

“Vex?”

“Vax?”

His breath (his heartbeat) was unsteady. She sounded worse, her whole body nearly shaking. _Vertigo_ , she thought dizzily—because she had been flying—

And her twin was there, kneeling, hugging her, grounding her like he always did. Collapsing against her, almost, but her arms tightened around him automatically, because holding each other up was as familiar as breathing.

(A breath stuck in her throat as she realized it was the first one she had drawn since waking up.)

“Vax, what’s going on?”

“I’ve got you,” he murmured, head ducked tight into her shoulder. “Finally, I’ve got you and it’s okay, you’re you, you’re here. _Vex’ahlia_.”

He sighed her name like a prayer, or the answer to one.

“Vax’ildan,” she snapped back, because she hated being this unsteady even in his arms, even with Trinket lumbering over to snuffle lovingly at them both. This dizzy with the sting of too-sharp teeth against her lip, the heady scent-and-something-more of fresh blood wafting from her brother and her bear, and the flickering pull of their heartbeats

Vax pulled back, finally, and moved a hand to her cheek. It was hot against her skin. He was still staring like she was a miracle he wasn’t sure he deserved to see.

“Do you remember…”

“What?” Vex’s voice was driven even higher and more brittle by her twin’s obvious concern. Cliff’s-edge high, stone brittle.

Trinket licked the blood off her face and she hooked an arm around his neck to steady herself. She did remember. Wind rushing past her face, flying--no, _falling_ , as the precipice cracked beneath her feet. Vax had shouted her name, she had reached back but it was too late, there was nothing—

Vex caught the breath she didn’t need and looked around the clearing again. There was no moon but the snow was bright enough in the starlight, dark only with blood that she could still smell cooling. Her mouth watered. It was everywhere on her, spilled from the desiccated corpse in her lap, the body half torn apart in her frenzy. To the side were neater lines, the patterned circle she’d woken up in. The only thing left there, now, in the churned snow, was a pale hand—this man’s hand, she realized. This corpse’s. That must be what had fallen off her chest. But even from here, she could tell it was far more shriveled than its match, like all the life had been leached from it.

Vax had a similar air about him. Too pale, too drawn. Good, dependable Trinket was just the same as ever, though now she could smell-feel-sense him blooming with blood and life, discoloured (in a precious and loyal manner) with heavy animal must. Vax was the same, but the extra weight about him was a wisp of unseen shadow, the taste of rot and cold earth in her mouth.

“Vax, what did you _do_.”

Her brother, usually the soft, open one, set his mouth in a hard line. “What I had to. To get you back.”

Vex hugged him, this time, because fuck it, they were already both covered in blood. She loosened her grip a little when he croaked in pain.

“You idiot,” she whispered in his ear, and to the warm pulse behind it to which her attention drew. But the grave dirt aura pushed her away. _Not this one_ , something deep inside whispered, so cold it blazed again. _Him, we keep_.

Vex agreed. The _something_ of cold and rot didn’t quite feel like Vax, but it did still feel like home.

“I know.” He ran his hands up and down her back, over her braid and along her arms. They were bare, when his were swathed in a thick black cloak, and her top naught but thin cotton. She still wasn’t cold.

“Do we owe someone something?” she asked.

“Little bit,” Vax admitted, and Vex knew an understatement when she heard one. “We need to go to a place called ‘Whitestone’, and do some...stuff.”

He sounded uncertain about it himself. Vex gripped him tighter, and reached out to tug Trinket into the hug as well. He butted his head against theirs with a happy huff. With her family safe around her and no next meal in sight, her incisors receded back into her mouth.

“We’ll figure it out,” Vex promised. “We always do.”

**Author's Note:**

> My working title for this was "wrong death deity, buddy".


End file.
